A patient may have acquired brain damage from, e.g., a traumatic brain injury (TBI) or a stroke. After suffering TBI or a stroke, there are various cognitive tests that are performed for diagnosis and then monitoring of recovery of a patient. These tests are normally performed with paper and pencil, and the results are entered into the patient's record. However, there are several trends that establish a need for digitizing such tests. For example, digital tests are better suited to direct data storage and thereafter data mining to predict the (cognitive) recovery of the patient and help with rehabilitation planning. In addition, this information may potentially be used to stratify new TBI or stroke patients.
There is growing economic pressure to move TBI and stroke patients along the care continuum as fast as possible, resulting in more patients doing rehabilitation at home with a reduced amount of time with face to face therapist interaction. The inventors have recognized that this creates a need for digital cognitive tests that can be performed by the patient themselves in an unsupervised setting, thereby enabling the recovery of the patient to be monitored at a higher frequency and the therapy plan to be adjusted remotely, if needed.
A common symptom of TBI and stroke are attentional deficits, such as hemispatial neglect. The assessment of hemispatial neglect typically comprises the patient performing a task involving searching and crossing out specific stimuli, as shown in FIGS. 2 and 3. As with other types of cognitive tests used in the assessment of attentional deficits, the assessment of hemispatial neglect is typically performed in a paper/pencil format.